Field
Embodiments consistent with the present invention generally relate to systems and methods for allowing users to supplement exchanges of instant messages, which collectively comprise a real time conversation, with automatically updateable content.
Description of the Related Art
Users of computing devices (e.g., laptops, cellular phones, and personal digital assistants) often need to communicate in real time. A common form of real-time communications is provided by instant messaging services. An instant messaging service allows participants at endpoints to send messages and have them received within a second or two by the other participants in a conversation. The receiving participants can then send responsive messages to the other participants in a similar manner. To be effective, a real-time conversation relies on the participants becoming aware of, reviewing, and responding to received messages very quickly. This quick response is in contrast to conventional electronic mail systems in which the recipients of electronic mail messages respond to messages at their convenience.
To support real-time communications, communications applications typically need to establish and manage connections (also referred to as sessions or dialogs) between computing devices. A session is a set of interactions between computing devices that occurs over a period of time. As an example, real-time communications applications such as MESSENGER or Voice over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”) establish sessions between communicating devices on behalf of users. The communication applications may establish an instant messaging (IM) session using any suitable IM protocol. One suitable IM protocol is SIP SIMPLE, the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) package for Presence and Instant messaging. SIP SIMPLE is defined by the IETF and used in the IMS platform defined by the 3GPP forum (see http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-simple-simple-06). Another example is Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), a communications protocol for message-oriented middleware based on XML (Extensible Markup Language).
Most real-time communications take place using plain text, though sometimes the text may include one or more embedded hypertext markup language (HTML) links. However, the use of embedded links to invoke additional services removes the receiving participant from the flow of the conversation when viewing such hyperlinks so that they miss additional messages from the sending participant or have to manage multiple windows to follow the sending participant's intended purpose for sending the application content.
A need therefore exists for systems and methods by which an exchange of instant messages between two or more participants can be automatically supplemented with additional content that is updated over the course of the exchange.